Jake's Law: A Zombie Novel (9 page)

Jessica played the perfect hostess, placing Reed’s
warm beer in the refrigerator and setting three of Jake’s ice-cold Budweiser long necks on the table, along with a bag of pretzels. She sipped her beer but didn’t touch the pretzels. Reed could barely keep his eyes off her as he spoke. Jake couldn’t blame him. She presented a lovely picture.

“They’re holed up in a house near the Oracle Park Inn, mostly getting drunk and doing drugs.
At least one of them sits on the balcony on guard at all times, usually guzzling whiskey. They don’t look like militia or anything, mostly bikers or ex-cons, but they’re well armed with rifles, shotguns, and pistols.”

Jake
nodded. He knew the type. “They released a lot of prisoners up in Florence when things got bad. They should have executed the lot of them.” He slammed his beer down on the table. “We’ll need a diversion.” He looked at Reed. “Do they all go to the same houses when they’re looting or do they split up?”

“
Split up, usually two or three per house. They drag what they want outside, and the truck comes and picks it up.”

Jake
looked at Reed with new found appreciation. “How long did you watch them?’

“All night.
I left before dawn. I found the dirt bike and pushed it halfway to San Manuel before getting up enough courage to hotwire it.”

Reed
flushed when Jessica reached out and patted his hand.

“Hotwired?”
Jake asked. “How does a science teacher learn how to hotwire motorcycles and follow tire tracks?”

“Just something I picked up from book
s.”

“
Some books.” He looked at Reed with renewed respect. “We’ll have to take them on two or three at a time. If they’re busy shooting up the place, a few more shots shouldn’t alarm them, but one mistake, and we’re both dead.”

“I’m going too,” Jessica said.

“No way,” Jake said, shaking his head vehemently side to side.

She narrowed her eyes and glared at him.
“You’ll need someone to drive the jeep if you have to get away in a hurry,” she insisted.

Before
Jake could protest, Reed sided with her. “She’s right. If we park too far away, we might not make it back if more of them show up.” He patted his rotund belly. “I’m not exactly built for speed. We can devise a signal if we need her to come pull our chestnuts out of the fire.”

Jake shook his head.
Two against one. That meant entrusting his life to two people he wasn’t completely sure of. He tried to think of another plan that didn’t involve her, but couldn’t. Reluctantly, he agreed. “Okay,” he said to Jessica. She flashed him a smile. “But if anything happens, you come straight back here. We’ll make our way back however we can.”

She nodded.

“We wait until tonight,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll be all liquored up.”

He knew it was too much to hope for. Even drunks stayed somewhat sober around zombies, or they quickly wound up as food.
At least they wouldn’t expect armed resistance. Maybe. Reed produced a short length of metal pipe. Its purpose eluded Jake until he saw the fuse dangling from one end. Now, the discarded pipe he had seen in Reed’s RV made sense.

“A
pipe bomb?” he questioned.

Reed
smiled and nodded. “I took the chemicals I needed for making gunpowder with me when they closed the school. I added a few chemicals to increase the explosive potential. I made two more. I thought it might level the playing field.”

Jake
knew a gun enthusiast who had blown himself up while making his own shotgun shells with homemade gunpowder. Black powder and gunpowder could be unpredictable and dangerous, especially for an amateur. He looked at the pipe bomb, a six-inch length of two-inch diameter steel pipe, capped at both ends. The fuse protruded from a hole drilled into one end cap.

“Have you tested it?”

Reed frowned. “No, but I followed the recipe closely. I studied chemistry, remember?”

“I don’t doubt your ability, but I would like to see how much damage it produces.”

Reed studied the pipe bomb in his hand. “Well, I suppose we could detonate it somewhere safe just to be sure.”

“I don’t want to frighten my livestock.
” Jake thought for a moment. “I know a place we can go.”

They
drove the ATV two miles down the valley to a canyon. When the terrain became too rough for the ATV, they continued on foot. Deep in the mountains, a series of small box canyons sprouted from Kielberg Canyon like tree branches. By the time they reached the canyon he sought, Jake was sweating profusely in the heat, and he considered himself to be in good shape, though he hadn’t exercised much since E-Day. Reed was so exhausted he could barely lift his feet. He took puffs from his inhaler every few hundred yards, but he still wheezed like an out of tune pipe organ. Of the three, only Jessica seemed to handle the brisk hike with impunity.
Maybe there’s something to this yoga business after all
, he mused.

At some point in the mountain’s history, someone had tried mining the
canyon for gold. They had found nothing of value, but the disintegrating mining equipment still rested where they had abandoned it half a century earlier. Soaptree yuccas, agaves, and horned toads were the only living things presently residing there. Jake chose a rusted steel ore carrier lying on its side beside a short set of rails leading to a collapsed tunnel. He buried the pipe bomb beneath the carrier, leaving only the fuse exposed.

“How long does the fuse burn?”

Reed looked sheepish. “I didn’t test it, but I used black powder in a cloth wrapper coated with nitrocellulose for waterproofing. The book says it burns at thirty centimeters per sixty seconds. That’s two seconds per centimeter or about five seconds per inch.”

“
About?” Jake replied. “Let’s be sure.” He snipped a small piece of fuse and held it up to a cigarette lighter. The one-inch piece of fuse burned for just over five seconds. “That’s forty seconds for an eight-inch fuse, thirty-five for this one. Let’s play it safe and call it half a minute.”

He scanned the terrain. An outcropping approximately a hundred
feet away would provide shelter from the blast. He had never been a fast runner, but he thought he could cover the distance in fifteen seconds, leaving fifteen seconds to grab dirt and cover his head.
Unless the damned thing blows up in my face.
“You two cover behind those rocks. I’ll light the fuse and join you.”

Jessica looked at him aghast. “Let me do it. I can run faster than you.”

He didn’t doubt it, but he wasn’t about to let her make the attempt. “Maybe on a good day, but you’re injured. I’ll do it.”

To prevent further arguing, he shoved her toward the outcropping. She left, but
not before searing him with an angry glare. Reed followed her. He waited until they both disappeared behind the rocks, and then lit the fuse. He ran as fast as he could, praying that he didn’t stumble. By the time he reached the outcropping, his heart was pounding. He hit the dirt and covered his head with his hands. Thirty seconds passed and still no explosion. He glanced at Reed questioningly just as the pipe bomb exploded. The noise was deafening. The ground shuddered beneath him. He covered his head again to protect it from flying gravel that settled over them in a cloud of dust.

The ore carrier now lay
upside down fifteen feet away from the three-foot-deep hole marking its former position. A yucca plant five feet from the carrier lay in broken pieces scattered on the ground, its outer leaves still smoldering from the heat of the blast. The rusted steel carrier was split along one side, with splinters of steel embedded in the ground and in the nearby plants. Smoke and dust still filled the small canyon.

“It worked,”
Reed yelled as he danced a jig, his rotund belly bouncing like tapioca pudding.

“Damned if it didn’t,”
Jake admitted, removing his baseball cap to scratch his head. “You say you have two more?”

Reed stopped
dancing and adjusted his glasses. “I have enough chemicals to make more.”

“Two should be enough with what I have in mind.”

“Just what is your plan?” Jessica asked.

He had been considering that.
“We’ll gather a zombie army,” he said, smiling.

7

June
10, 2016    Oracle, AZ –

The night was dark
with only a sliver of moon. Jake and Reed clung to the shadows as they approached the house. Jessica had parked a quarter of a mile away. Jake had left her the shotgun with orders for her to leave if she ran into trouble. He hoped she heeded his advice. They had watched seven of the marauders leave their lair in two groups with the truck accompanying one group, leaving two or three men at the house. Even though they rode motorcycles, they weren’t a biker gang; at least they wore no colors declaring their allegiance. They were just a group of men and a couple of boys in various dress riding motorcycles, probably stolen or salvaged.

He and Reed surreptitiously
followed three men on bikes to a small house on the outskirts of town. A man with blond hair kicked in the front door. Once inside, the three ransacked the house in an orgy of wanton destruction, selecting a few items and carrying them to the yard, destroying everything else. The items they chose for their pile of loot were baffling – a lamp with no shade, several two-liter bottles of cola, an embroidered pillow from the Grand Canyon, and a television. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their plundering. Their frequent target practice on windows and other breakable crockery dismissed any fears Jake had of discovery. No one would notice their shots amid the random firing of the looters.

If
Reed was squeamish about murdering someone, he didn’t show it. His disgust with the trio was visible on his grim face. He may have known some of the victims. Jake had no close friends, but he imagined revenge was on Reed’s mind. While the men were inside the house, he and Reed took up positions on each side of the small yard with a commanding view of the front door. He signaled for Reed to wait until all three were outside before opening fire. They had to kill them quickly. A long, drawn out gun battle would work in the gang’s favor.

Finally, all three men emerged
at the same time, passing around a bottle of booze and admiring their pile of loot. The blond kicked the lamp from atop a box of canned goods and crushed it beneath the heel of his boot.

“What the hell did you get this for?”
he growled.

“A reading lamp,”
a boy that couldn’t have been over sixteen replied. He puffed out his chest in a failed attempt to appear threatening.

The
fair-haired one laughed and poked a finger in the kid’s chest, throwing him off balance. “You can’t read. And you don’t need a reading lamp to jerk off to your tit magazines.”

Jake
shot the kid in the head before he could respond. Drunk or not, the other two rallied quickly, cowering behind their pile of stolen loot, shifting positions to search for their attacker. If he had been alone, they would have probably killed him, but Reed was on the other side of the yard. Jake took out the group’s blond leader with two quick shots. The third man, a pot-bellied young Mexican wearing a pair of dark blue suit pants, a dirty white tee shirt, and a vest that matched the pants, made a run for the desert, dodging and weaving to avoid being shot. Jake put a bullet into his back when he ran between two saguaro cacti at the edge of the yard. He fell headfirst into the dirt and skidded to a halt.

“Help me drag these two into the brush,” he
yelled to Reed.

Reed
stared down at the kid’s corpse for a moment. His face was pale and he looked as if he were about to throw up.

“Get over it,” Jake growled.

Reed nodded and grabbed one of the kid’s arms. They hid the bodies out of sight of the road. The Mexican was already hidden by a row of cacti. Jake disabled the three bikes by removing the spark plugs and puncturing the gas tanks with his knife. Then they waited for the truck. A short while later, its squeaking springs warned them of its approach. It roared up the long driveway, followed by a pair of motorcycles. Jake planted the bomb in the pile of stolen goods, lit a cigarette, and jammed the fuse into the cigarette halfway to the filter.

“That should give us two or three minutes,” he said
to Reed. He pointed to the dead Mexican in the suit pants and vest. “I’ve got a use for this one. Help me.”

Dragging
the Mexican’s body behind them, they retreated a safe distance to a low rise where they could observe the action. The truck pulled up in a cloud of dust. A tall thin man got out on the passenger side. He wore a straw Stetson over his long, stringy, reddish-brown hair and a leather vest over a white t-shirt. The driver remained in the vehicle. The cowboy tugged on his goatee, as he eyed the pathetic pile of stolen loot, and then shook his head.

“Where the hell are Whitey
, Slant, and the kid?” he yelled at his companions on the two bikes, as they pulled up and stopped beside the truck.